Cant help but feel sad in a strange way. Dont get me wrong, i think WG have done an amazing job on these HD maps and what not, But ive played almost 50k games so far, and after this update its going to look and feel pretty different, almost like a new game. I'll miss the old WoT, But also very excited for the new update

I can't help but feel WG are shooting themselves in the foot a little bit here. I mean, shouldn't they run both the old and new update for a while just to see what % of the player base have PCs that are actually capable of running this new version with an old potato PC? I reluctantly got a new PC recently and its great and all that but if I still had my work PC there's no yesterday would have been my last game and no chance of playing again. I'd imagine there's a LOT of players that were just about managing to play the pre-update version of WoT on minimum settings and I would think that maybe more that half the players are currently using PCs that are not going to be able to run this new version so are WG seriously happy to lose half it's players? Or more?

I mean, I can't possibly know what % of players are using old or under-powered PCs obviously but the point is I think WG may have been wearing blinkers when they developed this new HD, greater demanding version. Have they actually done any research into this? How many players are they gonna lose and by players we can say customers,. that would be unwilling to buy a newer PC but happy to spend €10-€20 every weekend or so on bits and pieces? You ever notice at the start of battles there are always several players that are "late" or afk due to potato PC or network? You might say good riddance to bad rubbish but maybe that's most the playerbase!! What you might be left with is dedicated gamers and unicums, in other words, tier10 battle feeling every battle, no easy kills, no noobs, no tech issue players. Unforgiving, highly demanding, stressed feeling among teams and players... aka, no fun.

Apparently the new game has the same minimum specs as before the graphical update, seen some comments that people are getting better fps on 1.0 but I've not played yet myself so I can't say that for sure

I can't help but feel WG are shooting themselves in the foot a little bit here. I mean, shouldn't they run both the old and new update for a while just to see what % of the player base have PCs that are actually capable of running this new version with an old potato PC? I reluctantly got a new PC recently and its great and all that but if I still had my work PC there's no yesterday would have been my last game and no chance of playing again. I'd imagine there's a LOT of players that were just about managing to play the pre-update version of WoT on minimum settings and I would think that maybe more that half the players are currently using PCs that are not going to be able to run this new version so are WG seriously happy to lose half it's players? Or more?

I mean, I can't possibly know what % of players are using old or under-powered PCs obviously but the point is I think WG may have been wearing blinkers when they developed this new HD, greater demanding version. Have they actually done any research into this? How many players are they gonna lose and by players we can say customers,. that would be unwilling to buy a newer PC but happy to spend €10-€20 every weekend or so on bits and pieces? You ever notice at the start of battles there are always several players that are "late" or afk due to potato PC or network? You might say good riddance to bad rubbish but maybe that's most the playerbase!! What you might be left with is dedicated gamers and unicums, in other words, tier10 battle feeling every battle, no easy kills, no noobs, no tech issue players. Unforgiving, highly demanding, stressed feeling among teams and players... aka, no fun.

Why do people always assume that "better graphics" automatically means "needs much more hardware"? WG knows quite well what hardware people are using and they damn sure designed the new engine to run on >95% of those systems. Not with all pretty details cranked up to maximum of course, but you don't need that to play the game. I've run quite a few tests with the enCore demo on different configurations, and even my 7 year old system could run it with just the onboard graphics (which even back then was crap). Didn't look pretty and didn't deliver triple-digit FPS, but if one wanted it would be playable. And just a midrange graphics card from several years ago could already handle ultra settings at full HD.

I can't help but feel WG are shooting themselves in the foot a little bit here. I mean, shouldn't they run both the old and new update for a while just to see what % of the player base have PCs that are actually capable of running this new version with an old potato PC? (...)

While it might require lower graphic settings, I think the stated goal was to keep the minimum requirements as-is. They're very well aware of people with 'potato' computers.

I think they've succeeded. I ran the Encore test on my old i5-3210 laptop with the integrated HD4000 graphics.

Low graphics was a 'great' result. 'Medium' was perfectly fine (good) with the dedicated 630M graphics (which is not very good). That's not a new, nor expensive, laptop, it's a lower-midrange model from 2012. About €650 when new. Today you'd get it thrown after you. It's effectively ancient in terms of gaming, and still has a crusty, slow disk drive. That thing runs WoT just fine.

How could WG possibly know what hardware people are using? and how could you possibly know this information?

It's not exactly rocket science for a piece of software (like the WoT client) to determine what hardware you're using and upload that information to some server where it can be used for statistical analysis.

While it might require lower graphic settings, I think the stated goal was to keep the minimum requirements as-is.

So players who were just about struggling but managing to play "ok" on minimum settings on the previous version, will still be just about able to continue playing on the newer version? Thing is, people shouldn't assume either that just because some players don't have a new pc or just a gaming pc that they can't afford them. Maybe like me of old, they simply couldn't be arsed forking out money for just one game and were happy to play along as more of a casual gamer for some pew pew fun on an arcade based game.

Geno1isme, on 21 March 2018 - 09:02 AM, said:

It's not exactly rocket science for a piece of software (like the WoT client) to determine what hardware you're using and upload that information to some server where it can be used for statistical analysis.

That's all good then. Of course, I don't really care and my concerns were more for slight selfish reasons. You see, as much as players b-itch and moan about mm and bad players, casual players, bots and afkers etc etc.. you won't ever have an epic game without them. 6-10+ kills? forget about it. The game NEEDS casual and bad players. Sucks when your team is stuffed with them, great when the enemy team is stuffed with them and OUTSTANDING when the enemy team is stuffed with them and your team is too, so your teammates act as meatshields and dither fish while you rip into the pack of enemy sheep like a wolf

Personally I think if some of the potato computers and the potatoes that play on them were pushed out of the game or forced to upgrade that might actually be a good thing for the game long term.

Considering the comment about 50% of players have never opened the options, I shudder to think how many people are out there playing on single figure FPS barely able to see their tank let alone what is going on around them, using tiny laptop screens where the mini-map is about the size of a postage stamp.

If you replaced some of the people playing on their borrowed work lap tops from 2007 with some more tech savvy gamers can't help but think the average standard of play would rise dramatically.

Personally I think if some of the potato computers and the potatoes that play on them were pushed out of the game or forced to upgrade that might actually be a good thing for the game long term.

Considering the comment about 50% of players have never opened the options, I shudder to think how many people are out there playing on single figure FPS barely able to see their tank let alone what is going on around them, using tiny laptop screens where the mini-map is about the size of a postage stamp.

If you replaced some of the people playing on their borrowed work lap tops from 2007 with some more tech savvy gamers can't help but think the average standard of play would rise dramatically.

Having a decent gaming rig doesn't make you any good at playing the games. stupid will be stupid